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Posts Tagged ‘2.5D’

Retired senior vice president of Si2, Sumit DasGupta, imparts his sage view on what the semiconductor, EDA and IP industries should focus on to ensure a vibrant semiconductor industry for 2014.

“As the new year rolls out, there are promises and associated challenges that the semiconductor industry faces that need attention to ensure the vibrancy of the industry, even as the industry struggles to stay on the Moore’s law trajectory.

First in my list is the area of 2.5D and 3D integration, an area of great promise but with significant challenges. Much has been touted about these approaches as ways to deliver “More than Moore” but it appears to this observer to be advancing at a pace that is slower than hoped for. It seems to be just another year away from full production. But now, enough said, 2014 needs to be the year when much greater focus must be applied to get at least 2.5D technology into mass production. This is not a transitory approach to 3D but rather should last longer in its own right as a very viable technology sitting alongside 3D as 2 approaches to semiconductor integration. 3D still has challenges to be addressed but here again, greater focus needs to be applied to ramp up to full production in 2015.

To finish off our series of predictions, I would like to point you to another series of interesting and informative prophesies. Click on the following topics to see these predictions collected by Brian Bailey, Editor of EDA DesignLine.

A number of 2.5D IC designs will hit the market and demonstrate both the value of 2.5/3D technology as well as the importance of powerful and user-friendly tools for “Pathfinding”, to quickly identify the best (lowest cost) implementation alternative.

Industry pressure is growing to deliver more mainstream 2.5D and 3D stacked die semiconductor products within the next 1-2 years, driven by the need to improve I/O bandwidth, reduce power consumption, and optimized choice of process technologies for different portions of a complex SoC. It is therefore quite possible that 2012 will see one of the large mainline EDA vendors broadly announce a full “platform” product suite targeting the design of 2.5D and 3D stacked die making use of through-silicon-vias (TSV’s). This design platform would likely incorporate tools from value-added niche vendors, and be endorsed in a large foundry reference flow. Open standards will later expand the range of choice and interoperability over time.

With regard to “Events” – 2012 will be a year of further acquisition and consolidation for both the EDA and IP industries. Some new faces will join the dance, with significant resources at their disposal. It is likely the “Big 3” will have at least one new name in a year’s time.

With regard to “Breakthroughs” – it’s a different story. 3D stacked-die design still won’t be mainstream in a year’s time. True hardware/software co-design will still be a developmental area and verification will still be as hard as ever. Many panels, blogs, seminars and special conference sessions will debate these topics throughout the year with great hope and excitement, however.

Step aside Nostradamus and Mayans. The real earth-shattering events of 2012 could take place in the EDA & IP industries. We asked industry friends, associates, clients and media folks to ponder what industry-shattering events or breakthroughs we might see in EDA & IP this coming year.

So what topics came up? Consolidation of the industry; standards; various technologies, 3D being the most discussed; even one man’s blatant personal goal. 🙂

We heard the word “challenge” a lot, for the big vendors and the smaller companies. So will two foundry-led EDA mega-companies duke it out with a third mega-company, as one diviner foretold? Tough to tell how tongue-in-cheek his prophesy was.

So we’ll post the visionary comments of one individual at a time, in the order they came into us. We found them enlightening and even entertaining! We hope you do too.